Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Dianne Richardson, who lives in Montpelier. She wrote it in honor of World Population Awareness Day, which is July 11.
I was born into an Irish Catholic family in central Vermont in the 1950s. I was always aware that my mother had more children than she wanted. I can remember asking her when I was only about five years old, “You didn’t want as many children as you had, did you, Ma?” And she answered, “No, I didn’t.”
So my next question was: “How many did you want?” To which she answered, “Five.” I instantly did the fastest mathematical computation of my life. I was her sixth child! Later she said it wasn’t just the number of children she had, it was also the number of years between children that was a problem for her.
She seemed to have a hard time coping with training more than one child at a time. Consequently, my oldest sister and my third oldest sister were taught to cook when they reached the appropriate age. The second and fourth daughters (including me) were made to clean, which didn’t require as much attention or training, as we were too near in age to the other girls. The other girls also cleaned, but they got more attention than we got. I eventually came to understand that my mother was overwhelmed by the many needs of her children and she coped by ignoring some and doing her best for the others.
As a senior in high school, I volunteered to be a Planned Parenthood peer counselor. It required the most intensive short-term training I had entered into in my life. I learned more anatomy and physiology than I had in high school and received training in the various forms of birth control available at the time. I needed to be able to answer a variety of questions asked of me as I interviewed girls and young women during their appointments at the Planned Parenthood clinic.
During one of those sessions there was a description and discussion of the “rhythm method” and its many pitfalls. It was mentioned that it was the preferred method of Catholics and that it was the least effective method to prevent pregnancy. So, of course, it didn’t take me long to find out if my mom had tried to use it.
I asked her how she tried to figure out when she was ovulating. She had no idea what I was talking about. Nor did she have any idea of how to use the method. So I asked, “Why did you think it would work?” Then she explained that when she asked her doctor he told her to talk to her priest! So I began to become aware of the difference reproductive freedom had on my life, in comparison to her experience.
A short time later, I learned more when my mom and I watched a movie about Margaret Sanger together. Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood. She saw women suffer illness and death as the results of illegal abortions and die as a result of too many pregnancies.
My mother told me she thought too many pregnancies caused her mother’s early death at age 38. Mom’s fear of over-reproduction was linked to her fear of an early death and she had nine children. That demonstrates how much stress not having reproductive freedom caused her to endure.
I have had no children. As I look back on my life, I am glad I had the ability to choose. I am proud not to have contributed to overpopulation, which is the underlying cause of global warming, a problem that I believe one day will overwhelm us and cause our extinction.
